Master of women power

Power of Woman , copper engraving, Germany approx. 1451–1475

A copper engraver who is not known by name and who was active in the Lower Rhine region around 1450 is referred to as a master of women power .

Naming

The master of women power got his emergency name after some of his illustrations of women power . These engravings represent the motif of the power of women, popular in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance , to easily turn a wise man into a fool. Women’s power symbolizes the “upside down world” in which the socially desirable order of the sexes is upside down.

First, a master from 1462 was named after a single engraving with a year , to which another 20 engravings with religious and secular motifs were then assigned. However, after the eponymous engraving of this master was recognized as a work of the master with the ribbon rolls , the remaining stitches were carried on under the emergency name of a master of women's power after these stitches underneath.

In the meantime it has been assumed that this remaining group of engravings could possibly have come from several different artists, i.e. not just from the master of women's power alone.

The design of several card games is also attributed to the master of women power.

Works (selection)

• Basel, Public Art Collection, Kupferstichkabinett
  • Follow to the Passion of Christ
• Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett
  • Capture of Christ
• Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett
  • Scenes from the life and passion of Christ
  • Card game
  • Card game
• Munich, Bavarian State Library
  • Power of woman
  • St. Catherine
• Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum , Graphic Collection
  • Maria lactans
• Vienna, Albertina Graphic Collection
  • Christ on the cross and three angels, around 1451–1475
  • Follow to the Passion of Christ

literature

• Max Lehrs: History and critical catalog of German, Dutch and French copper engraving in the XV. Century , Volume 1. Vienna 1908
• Max Geisberg: The copper engraving card game of the K. and K. court library in Vienna from the middle of the XV. Century . Strasbourg 1918
• Max Geisberg: Old playing cards. (Studies on German art history, reprint of the editions 1905, 1910, 1918) . Baden-Baden 1973
• Max Lehrs: Contributions to the work of the primitive engravers . In: Yearbook of the Prussian Art Collections 41 (1920), pp. 189–207
• Max Geisberg: The beginnings of copper engraving (master of graphics 2) . Leipzig 1923
• F. Rumpf: Contributions to the history of the early playing cards . In: Adolph Goldschmidt on his seventieth birthday. Berlin 1935, pp. 77-91

Web links

• Illustrations of works by the master of women power:
  • The adoration of the Magi at zeno.org